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The 3-D Printing Revolution

If you can think it, you can make it. Penn Staters, like student Kara Morgan, are immersed in a technology that many are calling the second Industrial Revolution.

The 3-D Printing Revolution

Work with 3-D printing is happening in departments across the University, from engineering and materials science to anthropology and architecture.

“3-D printing”—the popular name for “additive manufacturing”—has been identified as one of the coming cluster of “disruptive” technologies. Expectations are that it will be a way—not the only way—to make all sorts of stuff. Food. Toothbrushes. Shoes. Art. Building materials. Car dashboards. Moon habitats. Transplantable human organs and living tissue for medical research.

With this technique, objects are built up in layers—sometimes only microns thick—in three dimensions. In the past couple of years, boosted by the unique nexus of the Internet, a culture of collaboration and open-source approaches, and breathtaking advances in software and computing power, 3-D printing is starting to hit the mainstream. And it is sparking innovation through advances in computer-aided design (CAD) software, and the Internet as it connects researchers, tinkerers, and entrepreneurs.

David Saint John, instructor in engineering design in Penn State's College of Engineering, working with a 3-D printer constructed by engineering students. The printers can create 3-D solid objects from digital models.

Image: Patrick Mansell

Engineering students are building 3-D printers to learn the technology from the inside out, and to share the equipment with departments university-wide.

Saint John said that rather than waiting for funding, he opted to buy his own kit. “When I got my kit running, Richard was willing to post a course where we built our own printers, which I had the opportunity to run,” he said.

With content and course expectations in place, eleven students signed up for spring semester 2011, working on three kits. More than twice that many students took the course the second semester it was offered, and during the third semester, a print service began, offering printing of prototypes for other students.

Eric Lipsky, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State Greater Allegheny, allowed students to print a 3-D model of a Zero-Emissions Home they designed for a class project. Students modeled the house using CAD software, which helps to visualize their designs as they can rotate it and see different views of the design on the computer screen.

Image: Penn State

“Digital fabrication means a cultural revolution that says if you can think of it, you can draw it, and if you can draw it, you can make it.”—Richard Devon, professor of engineering design

By the end of fall semester 2012, forty-two students had built four printers and created a blog about the course.

During spring semester 2013, twenty-three students worked on six new machines, for a total of about a dozen systems. One was delivered to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, to print pastes as well as polymers, and one to Penn State Brandywine.

A Boost to the New Space Industry

According to Michael Policelli, graduate student in aerospace engineering and chief technologist for the Penn State Lunar Lion X Prize Team, as the technology’s use and acceptance within the aerospace community grow, 3-D printing will be a cornerstone of the new space industry.

“The Applied Research Laboratory is beginning to leverage our extensive capabilities and experience to develop the next generation of spacecraft components and hardware,” he said. “The Lunar Lion team is already building partnerships with companies to build additive manufactured rocket engines with advanced geometries—and dramatic cost and schedule benefits.”

Penn State freshman and aerospace engineering major Ben Garelick assembled a printed 3-D model of the Penn State Lunar Lion team's spacecraft during a team meeting. The Lunar Lion team brings together multiple disciplines and expertise from a variety of students to design and create a robotic spacecraft that could land on the Moon by 2015.

Image: Patrick Mansell

As the technology’s use and acceptance within the aerospace community grow, 3-D printing will be a cornerstone of the new space industry.

Devon ponders the global economic impact of the disruptive nature of an emerging manufacturing process, but notes that 3-D printing won’t be able to replace everything.

Saint John said it is a technology that allows people to achieve more than they might if they didn’t have a 3-D printer. “In our experience,” he said, “it helps speed up the development cycle, whether that's the development of a business prototype or the development of the student's capabilities."

“We tested out the printer by printing one of the house designs,” Lipsky said. “This allowed for the students to see and touch their design up close and make the connection between a design in their head and how it will look once it is built.”

Another project in the course is to design and build a toy for preschoolers. The hope is that the 3-D printer will allow students to create parts they need for their toy and give them a stronger connection to their design. “Now that the kinks have been worked out with the printer, we will be able to use it to print toy designs in the fall,” Lipsky said.

Once the toys are built, the students make a field trip to a neighboring preschool to test their toys with children. “It is one of the most fun parts of the class,” Lipsky said. “Everyone has a good time that day.”

A new stream-based monitoring system recently discovered high levels of methane in a Pennsylvania stream near the site of a reported Marcellus shale gas well leak, according to researchers at Penn State and the U.S. Geological Survey. The system could be a valuable screening tool to assess the environmental impact of extracting natural gas using fracking.